


Disconnect

by floweringFuture



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: HeartGold & SoulSilver | Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver Versions
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Long-Distance Friendship, Past Relationship(s), Past lyra/silver, author is projecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 06:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12451278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweringFuture/pseuds/floweringFuture
Summary: Lyra calls Ethan. She misses her best friend, but old issues are still rearing their heads, and she's finding it hard to keep her worries at bay.





	Disconnect

**Author's Note:**

> So basically this is me projecting some recent events onto the Johto kids instead of sleeping. It's a pretty personal thing but it got away from me a little, so I thought I'd share it anyway...? Nothing like some public venting and I really hope that's not my only reason for posting it. 
> 
> Anyway, feel free to leave some feedback (and let me know if parts are too obscure because this is unbeta'd and I might have written it so that you needed to be there in person to understand what's going on. I'd like to see if I can separate my own thoughts from a fictional scenario, I suppose? Hell I don't know I need to go to sleep, and I need to phone my best friend soon. I think writing this helped.)

Lyra waves to her camera as Ethan’s face fizzles into view on her computer screen. The connection flails around for a minute before he resolves into a proper image instead of a mass of distorted pixels, and they both grin at each other once the call is holding steady. He’s lounging somewhere - probably a bed in his latest Pokemon Centre, if Lyra had to guess - and is holding his phone at a lazy angle above him. She’s not sure if it’s just the picture quality, but his eyes look bleary with a haze of exhaustion.

“Hey, Ethan!” she chirps, voice pitching higher than usual with joy. “How’ve you been? We haven’t spoken in ages!” _Not since the last time I called you. Or the time I called you before that._  

“Lyra,” he replies, and Arceus his voice has deepened even more since they last spoke. _Late bloomer_ , she laughs to herself. She wonders if he’s still covered in freckles from the summer, whether he’s gotten even more since they parted ways. How he could get freckles from the sun when he shines brighter than it has always been a mystery to her, anyway. He smiles at her, contentedly - anyone but Lyra would call it a rather dopey look - before he bothers to answer her. “Things are good! I’m really shattered, like all the time, but what else would you expect, you know?”

She hums in agreement, bobbing her head in a nod. She’s not the only one who’s perpetually tired, then, regardless of their opposite paths. “How’s Kanto treating you, Mr. Champion?” she asks, throwing in an eyebrow wiggle for good measure. He makes a face before he barks out a laugh in response, and even with the tinny sound of the call it’s like music to her ears. 

“Clearly these gyms have it out for me, you know,” he grumbles. “Me and the team have just been training, non-stop, almost like we’ve gotta go over all the basics again.” He shrugs at her, after she lets out a sympathetic huff. “It’s not like we mind, though - we’re all learning a lot by doing stuff like this. It’s good, training properly, lets you fix all the things you all messed up when you were newbies.” 

It’s Lyra’s turn to laugh at that; an obvious dig at the start of their journey, when both of them were clueless trainers just fresh out of New Bark Town. “Ethan, you know we put those days behind us!” she moans, the fondness of the memories fighting with how mortified they make her. 

“Yeah, but it’s so fun watching you squirm about it,” he shoots back with a smirk. It’s easy to fall back into their usual banter after that, filling each other in on the peculiarities of their new lives. Lyra’s heart swells at how familiar and comfortable this routine is; she doubts they’d drift apart that easily - it’s only been a couple of months, after all - but all the same… She can’t help but miss him, really. Her closest friend, and after exploring their home region together, they’ve suddenly parted. 

It’s so nice to hear him chattering away about his travels in the next-door region, and he asks her just as much about her studies and the mountains of schoolwork she’s been buried under. “You don’t realise how much school you miss by going on a Pokemon journey until you try and catch up with it all,” she grumbles. 

_See you at Christmas,_ Ethan had said on their last day together. _Don’t forget to keep in touch!_ Lyra had replied, and then, _you’re definitely coming back, then?_   She’d be on break from her studies, but with the entire world open to him, there wasn’t really any telling whether he’d remember to visit. _Of course, there’s no way I’d miss spending the holidays back at home._

Lyra would have worded it differently. No way she’d miss spending the holidays with her best friend, after all. _Is he assuming it’s gone unsaid?_ she ponders.

In a lull in the conversation, Lyra stares into her lap and starts to fiddle with her hands. It’s so easy for her to become bitter and scared all over again, to picture the old chasm between them opening up as easy as that _. It’s not like things ever did go back to how they were,_ she thinks, a note of resentment worming its way into her mind even though Ethan is right there. _We’ve both changed so much. And with what happened with Silver…_

Almost like she said it out loud, Ethan snaps his fingers and scoots upright a little. “You know who I saw again the other day? Only our very favourite rival,” he declares, before pulling a face. “The gyms here have a fairly concrete order, so it’s not like I’ve seen the last of him either. Not for a long time, I reckon.” It’s possible to ignore the slight tone of disgust in his voice - but Lyra takes a small amount of vindictive joy from it, if only for a moment. It’s soon outweighed by pity: a directionless Silver had latched onto Ethan’s dream, and now with everything gone to shit and left on a precarious note, it seems Ethan has gotten stuck seeing him on a regular basis. 

“How is he?” she asks, slowly, cautiously. Talking about Silver is always a risky topic for Lyra - if she sees him again, she’s not sure if she’d deck him, or hug him, or both. And she supposes it’s not pleasant ground for Ethan either, but she does wonder just how he got hurt. Was he insulted on her behalf, after everything Silver pulled, ill or not? Or is she overestimating how much she means to him? 

“I think he’s good, actually,” he replies, and Lyra smiles despite herself. “He’s seemed a lot better since he’s been hanging out with that other trainer he met at one of the gyms. Think he’s even trying out to become one of their members, actually.” 

“That’s really good,” Lyra says, surprising herself again with how warm she sounds. “I’m so glad. For everyone’s sake, really, especially that trainer he’s with. I know doing something like that meant a lot to him, and that he can actually achieve it now…” 

She trails off, consciously dropping the subject. The catastrophe of their relationship is still sore ground for everyone that was involved, but right now she wants to keep asking after Silver anyway. _Keeping tabs on him, making sure he’s well… just like I always used to, and we all saw how_ that _turned out,_ she thinks privately. _I let him walk all over me for way too long, even though he wasn’t in such a good place when we met. It’s not like that excuses everything that went down, but I still care about him, even now. But thank god for Ethan stepping in time and time again, huh?_  

“You’ve been too good to me, Ethan,” she mumbles quietly. He makes a _hmm_ in response, having guessed her train of thought - he was always the one who could stand up to Silver in Lyra’s place, after all. Even with her hazy memories of that year, she’d spot Ethan’s brightness from a mile away. A no-excuses mentality hides under his sunny demeanour, and Lyra is eternally grateful for it. He’s always been the stronger of them, and she thinks he knows it; most of the time, anyway. Nobody’s perfect, not even the champion, she understands now. 

_Maybe that’s why you never call me first,_ she wonders, not bothering to work out if she’s idolising him or pointing out his own issues. She doesn’t dare say it aloud for fear of upsetting everything they’ve pieced back together, even though there’s still plenty of work to be done. Lyra wonders if Ethan misses the way things used to be when they were just kids, back before she started wondering if she meant as much to him as he to her. Before his intervention in the dynamic of boot and doormat - when things were easy. Comfortable. 

With a little effort, Lyra brushes the thoughts from her mind, and tries to pick up where the conversation left off. After all, if he didn’t want to speak to her, Ethan would have made an excuse cut the call by now with the amount of silence she’s making them sit in. He really is too good to her, and she hopes she’s been good to him.

Ethan breaks into her thoughts with a loud yawn - clearly unexpected, as he frowns and slaps his hand over his mouth much too late. He really is tired, huh. “Jeez, it’s gotten kinda late…” he murmurs, glancing at the watch on his wrist. “We’ve gotta call earlier next time! It’s been really good catching up, but I’m so knackered, I’ve really gotta grab some sleep…” The face he makes might be an apologetic one, but Lyra finds it hard to tell. 

She laughs softly, leaning into her hands with elbows on the desk, gazing at his picture on the screen for a long minute - memorising how he looks, and wondering how different he’ll be next time - before moving her mouse nearer the disconnect button. “Goodnight, Ethan,” she says, managing to keep her voice steady. “Sleep well, and we’d better speak again soon, you hear?”

He nods, flashing his usual grin and waving at her with briefly renewed vigour. “Yeah. Night, Lyra. Miss you.”

The screen goes dark as the call ends. Lyra stares blankly at her own reflection for a minute, before she resolves to call Ethan again soon. She thinks back on all the years they’ve known each other - he’s never called first, has he? It’s probably not a bad sign. The thought is reassuring, though she wishes it had come a little earlier in the evening.  

She’ll see him once the holidays roll around, anyway.


End file.
